Tag: Iraq

The final days of the Islamic State group may be nearer than ever. Nearly three years after the founding of its caliphate, ISIS faces almost total expulsion from Iraq and a formidable showdown with forces backed by the U.S. and Russia in its two remaining hubs of control in Syria. In Iraq, ISIS is poised for defeat in […]

US armored Humvees driving this week from Iraqi Kurdistan to Syria Except for one missing factor, the United States is in advanced preparations for the operation to oust the Islamic State from Raqqa, its Syrian stronghold, as Mission Mosul winds down in Iraq. Tuesday, March 28, a large convoy of trucks, with the KRG numbers […]

Nearly three weeks into the last phase of the battle for Mosul, Iraqi forces have started pushing into the most heavily fortified and lethal corners of the crumbling city. This weekend the battles in the city, the Islamic State’s last urban stronghold in Iraq, were some of the most intensive yet. Maj Gen Haider al-Maturi, […]

The Iraqi air force Friday, Feb. 24, conducted its first ever bombardment of the Islamic State in Syria. The target was the southeastern town of Abu Kemal near the Iraqi border, to which ISIS has removed most of its command centers from its main Syrian stronghold in Raqqa. Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Tahseen […]

Iraq’s government said it took a major stride toward recapturing the ISIS stronghold of Mosul on Thursday, storming a strategically important airport and a nearby military base. ISIS had been using Mosul Airport as a training camp and a factory for making car bombs — one of their most effective weapons against U.S.-backed forces trying […]

While so-called Islamic State rules the road, Iraqi forces took control of the skies on the second day of a fresh offensive to retake western Mosul, as the BBC’s Quentin Sommerville reports from the front line. Read More: Islamic State: Battle for Mosul by land and air – BBC News

With his boss having banned Iraqi citizens from entering the US and threatening to seize its oil, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis’s goodwill visit to Baghdad was always going to be a tough sell. But within hours of arriving in the Iraqi capital on Monday, Mattis had told senior officials that the US would do […]

A draft of Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration to the US from countries in the war-torn Middle East is causing panic among refugees. Tom Jensen, an immigration lawyer in Washington DC, spent a good portion of his day yesterday on the phone to a frantic client in Iraq. Jensen was trying to show the […]

Powerful Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has warned that any potential move of the US Embassy in Israel — as pledged by US President Donald Trump — would be a “declaration of war” against Islam. “Transferring the US Embassy to Jerusalem would be a public and more-explicit-than-ever declaration of war against Islam,” said the statement […]

Iraqi Shi’ite militias were massing troops on Monday to cut remaining supply routes to Mosul, Islamic State’s last major stronghold in Iraq, closing in on the road that links the Syrian and Iraqi parts of its self-declared “Caliphate”. Six weeks into the U.S.-backed offensive on Mosul, Islamic State is fighting in the area of Tal […]